Battle on the Kempen Heath

This article describes a battle west of Krefeld in 1642. Another battle, known as the Battle of Krefeld , took place at the same location in 1758 .

Coordinates: 51 ° 17 ′ 49 ″  N , 6 ° 31 ′ 13 ″  E

Battle on the Kempen Heath

Part of: Hessenkrieg ( Thirty Years War )

Contemporary copper engraving by Matthäus Merian from the Theatrum Europaeum

date	January 17, 1642
place	near St. Tönis , between Kempen , Hüls and Krefeld
output	Victory for France and Hesse
consequences	Northern Kurköln is occupied and looted by Protestant troops.

Parties to the conflict
Catholic Alliance: Holy Roman Empire Archbishopric Cologne	Protestant Alliance: Kingdom of France (+ Weimaraner ) Hessen-Kassel
Commander
Guillaume de Lamboy	Jean Baptiste Budes de Guébriant Kaspar Graf von Eberstein
Troop strength
8000-9000	9000
losses
2500 dead, 3000 partly high-ranking prisoners, 6 cannons	115 dead, 260 wounded

Approach and line up the opponents

The Battle of the Kempen Heide (also known as the Battle of the Hülser Heide, St.-Tönis-Heide or the Battle of the Hückelsmay ) was a battle of the Thirty Years War that took place on January 17, 1642 between Catholic ( imperial and Electoral Cologne ) troops on the one and Protestant ( French , Hessian and Weimar ) troops on the other side in the heath between Kempen , Hüls , Krefeld and St. Tönis on the Lower Rhine . The battle ended with a crushing defeat for the imperial Cologne defenders; as a result, northern Kurköln fell under Protestant occupation.

Background and starting position

Protestant invasion

In the final phase of the Thirty Years' War, in continuation of the " Hessian War " , moved on the instructions of the French King Louis XIII. and his advisor Cardinal Richelieu, Protestant mercenary troops from northern Germany to the west towards the Rhineland . The troops consisted on the one hand of a French army under the command of General Jean Baptiste Budes de Guébriant , which was supported by Weimar mercenaries. The French were followed by a Hessian corps in the service of Landgravine Amalie von Hessen-Kassel and Hessen-Marburg under the leadership of General Kaspar Graf von Eberstein . The Hessian and French- Weimaraner troops had previously fought together in alternating compositions near Fulda , in the monastery of Münster , in the " upper quarters " , during the siege of Dorsten (1641) and Wolfenbüttel (1641). Now the troops were supposed to bring the Catholic areas loyal to the emperor west of the Rhine, in particular the Archbishopric and Electorate of Cologne (Kurköln) and the Duchy of Jülich-Berg , under Protestant control. The long-term goal of the French king was a march south and an attack on the Habsburg Alsace .

After Christmas 1641, the first French troops and the Weimaraner crossed the Rhine near Wesel and set up their winter quarters in the Electorate of Cologne on the Lower Rhine . The Hessians followed shortly after the turn of the year. The Protestant troops united on the left bank of the Rhine to form a common army with a total of around 9,000 men and on January 14, 1642 they attacked the Electoral Cologne city of Uerdingen east of Krefeld, which was captured after three days of resistance. On January 15, the neighboring Linn was also enclosed and Linn Castle besieged.

Imperial-Cologne reaction

In response to the French invasion, the Elector of Cologne, Ferdinand, asked the German Emperor Ferdinand for support. The emperor hurriedly ordered one of his armies, which had fought under the leadership of General Guillaume de Lamboy in the Netherlands , to come to the Rhineland for defense. The imperial army, consisting of 8,000 to 9,000 men, crossed the Meuse near Venlo and arrived at Kempen on the territory of the Electorate of Cologne at the beginning of January 1642.

In addition to the army of Lamboy, the emperor had ordered a second army with about 1000 men under the command of the general Melchior von Hatzfeldt , which was south of Bonn near Andernach . 3000 allied Spanish soldiers camped near Venlo also received the order from the emperor to come to Lamboy if necessary. The Cologne Elector Ferdinand instructed Lamboy not to engage in any battle before the requested reinforcements had arrived, so that the Imperial Cologne army would be numerically superior. Lamboy then set up a fortified position on the Hülser Heide between Sankt Tönis and Hüls, where a border security system, a so-called Landwehr, facilitated the defense. There he expected the arrival of Hatzfeldt.

Location of the battlefield

In the west and north-west of Krefeld, at the time of the battle, there was a vast heathland stretching in the north to Hüls, in the north-west to Kempen and in the west to behind St. Tönis. This landscape was called Kempe (ne) r Heide , Hülser Heide , Sankt-Tönis-Heide ( Sankt-Antonis-Heide , Tönisheide for short ) or simply Die Heide .

Through the eastern heath which ran Kempener Landwehr , an old border fortifications between the former for the county Moers associated glory Krefeld to the east and to the Office Kempen associated "Little Honschaft " with St. Tönis in the west. Southwest of Krefeld, the Kempen Landwehr met a second Landwehr, which ran in an east-west direction from Linn to the Niers near Süchteln and separated the Kempen office and the glory of Krefeld in the north from the Linn office in the south. This southern Landwehr ran in the area of ​​today's forest through the heather south of St. Tönis.

The Landwehr, of which only a few remains are preserved today (including in the Krefeld forest near the Holterhöfe settlement , today a ground monument ), then consisted of three ditches and two walls each overgrown with thick bushes. The border, fortified in this way, could therefore hardly be penetrated by heavy, mounted troops or teams and only passable at a few passages controlled by barriers . Barriers existed in the southern section on the Hückelsmay and the Stock, among other places .

• Remains of the Landwehr in Krefeld-Forstwald (05.10.2018)
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Course of the battle

Since his troops were well covered by the Landwehr, Lamboy believed himself in a safe position and calmly awaited the arrival of Hatzfeldt's support before he wanted to go into battle against the Protestant army. In order to take advantage of the still existing majority and to forestall the imperial reinforcements, the Protestants decided to carry out a surprise attack on Lamboy immediately after the conquest of Uerdingen. At night they moved in an arc south around Krefeld and on the morning of January 17th they attacked the imperial defense positions on the southern Landwehr.

Lamboy was evidently unprepared for the rapidity of the Protestant attack. When the Hessian advance guard, led by Reinhold von Rosen, carried out the first attack on the Landwehr, the main part of the Catholic troops were still encamped some distance away in the quarter. The few troops guarding the Landwehr could only slow down the onslaught, but not stop it, despite the advantageous defensive position and despite the cavalry hurriedly sent to help. The advance guard attack was repulsed, but before the imperial army was ready to defend in full battle line-up, the Protestant troops had carried out a second full-strength attack and had broken through in two places, at the barriers at Hückelsmay and at Stockhof . The passages were widened with shovels and hoes so that the entire Protestant army could march quickly through.

The actual battle on the heath followed. The Catholic troops were now at a disadvantage because of the surprise effect and because they had already lost most of their cannons , which were placed directly at the Landwehr for defense, to the Protestants. As the battle continued, the Catholic Alliance suffered heavy losses. 2500 Catholic soldiers died on the battlefield, 300 more dragoons were killed by the Hessian cavalry while fleeing. 3,000 soldiers, including lower officers, Colonel Johann von Eppe , Sergeant General Kaspar von Mercy and Lamboy himself, were taken prisoner. The Protestant troops also captured all equipment, including six heavy 10-pounder cannons, as well as the luggage of the Alliance troops.

The fleeing remainder of the Catholic army, consisting of around 2000 horsemen, was brought in by Reinhold von Rosen near Zülpich , from where it was hunted to Münstereifel with further high losses . The imperial relief army under Field Marshal Count Hatzfeldt was only able to take up a fraction of Lamboy's army near Düren.

consequences

The day after their surprise victory, the Protestants first occupied the previous Catholic headquarters in St. Tönis, from where Eberstein also reported to Landgravine Amalie. Then the siege of Linn Castle was continued and Oedt Castle was attacked and taken.

Since the imperial and Electoral Cologne resistance was broken by the devastating defeat, the allied Franco-Weimar and Hessian contingents were able to overrun and occupy the entire northern Erftland in the weeks and months that followed . After St. Tönis and Linn numerous other cities, fortresses, monasteries and villages were attacked, besieged, plundered and devastated, including the cities of Kempen, Neuss , Dormagen , Lechenich , whose castle they could not take, and many others.

In the following months and years, even after the end of the war with the Peace of Westphalia of 1648, the Lower Rhine region suffered heavily from the occupation by billeted mercenaries. These times are known and notorious in the region as the "Hessen Years" or the Hessian War.

literature

• E. von Schaumburg: The battle on the St. Tönis-Haide (January 17, 1642) and the capture of Oedt, Neuss, Kempen and Linn . In: Annals of the Historical Association for the Lower Rhine (AnnHVNdrh) . tape 38 , 1882, p. 50-86 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h} Johannes Sporschil: History of the emergence, growth and size of the Austrian monarchy . Fifth volume. Volckmar, Leipzig 1894, p. 54 ( full text in Google Book Search).
2. ↑ ^{a b} History of the former glory Lobberich. Third chapter: praise under Spanish rule. (No longer available online.) Lobberland eV, archived from the original on December 8, 2008 ; Retrieved February 17, 2011 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.   
3. ↑ E. von Schaumburg, 1882 (see literature)
4. ↑ Note: In some sources, the date according to the Julian calendar is January 7th.
5. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} Eberhard Wassenberg: Florus Germanicus . Frankfurt am Main 1647, p. 464 ff . ( Excerpt from 30jaehrigerkrieg.de).
6. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Helmut Sallmann: The forest forest - a district with an unusual biography. From the scene of two battles to a bourgeois place of residence . In: Verein für Heimatkunde eV Krefeld (Hrsg.): Die Heimat - Krefelder Jahrbuch . Edition 78. Krefeld 2007 ( full text (PDF; 365 kB) on heimat-krefeld.de).
7. ↑ ^{a b} John desert Rath: Historialis descriptio Ecclesiae Parochialis in Uerdingen . Manuscript from 1629-1649. In: Historical Association for the Lower Rhine, in particular the old Archdiocese of Cologne (Hrsg.): Annals of the Historical Association for the Lower Rhine, in particular the Old Archdiocese of Cologne . Issues 13-14. L. Röhrscheid, 1863, p. 228–237 ( full text in Google Book Search).
8. ↑ Krefeld in old maps. City of Krefeld, accessed on February 16, 2011 . 
9. ↑ Premodern. City of Tönisvorst, accessed on February 16, 2011 . 
10. ^ The territorial situation in the 14th century . Map of the offices in the Lower Rhine region. ( Online at bkg.bund.de).
11. ↑ Territorialization. (No longer available online.) Krinvel.net, archived from the original on November 13, 2010 ; Retrieved June 1, 2011 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
12. ↑ Christoph Reichmann: Archaeological investigations on the medieval Landwehr (Hückelsmay) . In: Verein für Heimatkunde eV Krefeld (Hrsg.): Die Heimat - Krefelder Jahrbuch . Edition 80. Krefeld 2009, p. 186–189 ( full text (PDF; 670 kB) on heimat-krefeld.de).
13. ↑ Glory Krefeld. City of Krefeld, accessed on February 16, 2011 . 
14. ↑ Landwehr: An old redoubt for peace in the country. Westdeutsche Zeitung online edition (wz newsline), April 30, 2007, accessed on June 11, 2012 . 
15. ^ ^{A b} Günther Engelbert: The Hessian War on the Lower Rhine . Annals of the Historical Association for the Lower Rhine. 1959.
16. ^ Letter from Eberstein in the Hessian State Archives in Marburg, No. 41168.
17. ^ Sarburg / Walram: Defense and triumph of the castle and the city of Lechenich against Hessian, French and Weimar troops in 1642. Cologne 1643